Christopher Priest - The Prestige

6th July 1904

At a quarter to three this morning my life was brought to its end by a sudden seizure of the heart, following a spasm of coughing and consequent internal bleeding.

My dying was protracted, painful, messy and profoundly distressing to Julia and my children, as well as to myself. We were all shocked by the wretchedness of dying, and have been greatly subdued by the event.

Death uniquely surrounds my life!

Once, in harmless deception, I pretended to die so that Julia might live without scandal as a widow. Every use of the Tesla apparatus later brought death to my experience, several times a week. When Rupert Angier was laid falsely to rest I was alive to bear witness to it.

I have cheated death many times. Death has therefore acquired a sense of unreality for me. It has come to be a commonplace event that by some paradox, it seems, I can always survive.

Now I have seen myself on my deathbed, dying of multiple cancers, and afterwards, after that vile and painful death, I am here to report it in my diary. Wednesday, 6th July 1904: the day I died.

No man should be so wretched as to have to see what I have beheld.

#############

Later

I have borrowed a technique from Borden, so that I am I as well as myself. I who write this am not the same as the I who died. We became two entities that night in Lowestoft, when Borden caused the malfunctioning of the Tesla apparatus. We went our separate ways. We have been together again since I returned to Caldlow House at the end of March, just as my temporary remission from the cancers began.

While I yet lived, I maintained the illusion that I was one. One of me lay dying, while the other of me recorded my final concerns. All entries in this journal since 26th March have been written by me.

We are each the prestige of the other.

My dead prestige lies downstairs in his open casket, and will be placed in the family vault in two days’ time. I, his living prestige, continue onward.

I am the Right Honourable Rupert David Angier, 14th Earl of Colderdale, husband to Julia, father to Edward, Lydia and Florence, Lord of Caldlow House in the County of Derbyshire, England.

I shall narrate my story tomorrow. The events of the day have left me, like everyone else in the household, too forlorn for anything but sadness.

7th July 1904

The remainder of my life begins on this day. What hopes can be entertained by one such as I! The following is my story.

I came into being on the evening of 19th May 1903, in an unoccupied loge in the Pavilion Theatre in Lowestoft. My life began as I balanced on the wooden rail, from which I promptly fell backwards. I crashed to the floor of the loge, scattering the chairs.

My preoccupation was the terrified thought which had sprung into my mind an instant before; that Borden had somehow found his way up to the loge and was waiting for me. Clearly not! As I floundered between the loge chairs, trying to orientate myself physically, I realized that although Borden had sabotaged the apparatus in some way, it had worked sufficiently for the transportation to have been completed. Borden was not here.

Bright light flooded into the loge, as the spot was turned on it. No more than two or three seconds had elapsed. I thought: there is still a chance to save the illusion! I can crawl back to the rail, make something of it!

I rolled over, got to my hands and knees, and was about to clamber up to the rail when to my amazement I heard a voice on the stage calling for the curtain to be rung down. I moved forward, keeping my head down, and peered down at the stage. The tabs were already dropping, but before they blocked my view I briefly saw myself, my prestige!, immobile on the stage.

Built into the base of the Tesla apparatus is a compartment into which the prestige automatically falls as the transformation takes place. My old body, the prestige, is therefore concealed from the audience so as to give maximum impact to the illusion.

This time, Borden's intervention must have prevented the compartment from functioning, leaving the prestige in full view!

I thought quickly. Adam Wilson and Hester were both backstage, and would have to deal with the emergency there behind the curtain. I was alive, strong and in full possession of my senses. I realized it was my responsibility to get to the backstage area, and confront Borden once and for all.

I let myself out of the loge, hurried along the corridor, then took the stairs at a run. I passed one of the female attendants. I skidded to a halt in front of her, and said as urgently as I could, "Have you seen anyone trying to leave the theatre?"

My voice came out as a harsh whisper!

The woman, staring straight at me, screamed in horror. I stood there helplessly for a moment, deafened by the terrible yell she was emitting. She drew breath, her eyes popping and rolling, then she screamed again! I realized I was wasting time, so I laid my hand on her arm to push her gently to one side. My hand sank into the flesh of her arm!

She had collapsed on the steps, shuddering and moaning, as I reached the bottom of the stairs and found the door to the backstage area. I shoved it open, recoiling as once again I felt my hands and arms pushing into the wood. I was preoccupied with the urgent need to find Borden, and had no time to pay much attention.

Without noticing me, Adam Wilson ran past from his position at the back of the set; I called after him but he heard me no more than he had seen me. I paused for a moment, trying to think clearly about where Borden was most likely to have been. He had somehow interrupted the supply of electricity to the apparatus, and this could only mean that he had gained access to the sub-stage mezzanine. Wilson and I had connected everything up to the terminal the management had newly installed in the basement.

I found the stairs leading down, but as I went on to the top step I heard the sound of feet running heavily towards me, and in a moment Borden himself appeared. He was still wearing his ridiculous country-bumpkin clothes and greasepaint. He took the steps two at a time. I froze. When he was no more than five feet away from me he looked up to see where he was going. He saw me instead! Once again, I witnessed the look of terror that had distorted the features of the female attendant. Borden's momentum carried him towards me, but his face was contorted with shock and he stretched out his arms defensively in front of him. Almost at once we collided.

We sprawled together, and fell heavily on the stone floor of the corridor. He was briefly on top of me, but I was able to slide out. I reached towards him.

"Stay away from me!" he cried, and crouching forward, stumbling and tripping, he scrambled away.

I dived at him, got my hand around his ankle, but he slipped it from my grasp. He was bellowing wordlessly with fear.

I shouted at him, "Borden, we must stop this dangerous feud!", but once again my voice came out hoarsely and inaudibly, more breath than tone.

"I didn't mean it!" he cried.

He was on his feet now and getting away from me, still looking back at me with an expression of dread. I gave up the struggle, and let him flee.

After that night I returned to London, where I lived for the next ten months, by my own choice and decision, in a half-world.

The accident in the Tesla apparatus had fundamentally affected my body and soul by placing them in opposition to each other. Physically, I had been rendered into a ghost of my former self. I lived, breathed, ate, passed bodily waste, heard and saw, felt warm and cold, but I was physically a wraith. In a bright light, if you did not look too closely at me, I appeared more or less normal, if somewhat wan of aspect. When the weather was overcast, or I was in an artificially lit room after nightfall, I took on the appearance of a spectre. I could be seen but also seen through . My outline remained, and if people looked hard enough at me they could make out my face, my clothes, and so on, but I was to most people a hideous vision of the ghostly underworld. The female attendant and Borden had both reacted as if they had seen a ghost, and indeed they had. I quickly learned that if I let myself be noticed in these circumstances, I not only terrorized most of the people whom I encountered, but I put myself in some danger too. People react unpredictably when frightened, and once or twice strangers hurled objects at me, as if to ward me off. One of these missiles was a lighted oil-lamp, and it nearly caught me. As a rule I therefore stayed out of sight when I could.